


Strategies for the Advanced Player

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Series: Oh my god, they were checkmates... [10]
Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Humor, I really have no clue how to tag this - can you tell?, Identity Porn, Light Angst, Living Together, Mustaches, SIKE! we're ending on:, Sexual Frustration, Sexual Tension, deviates from canon in ep. 6: Adjournment, it started out funny and turned into something oddly kinky, let's end on a normal tag:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27981408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: "No woman can compete with Benny's love for himself." - Cleo,The Queen's GambitBenny leaves his things lying around. There has to be something there that'll make him look at Beth the way she wants him to.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Series: Oh my god, they were checkmates... [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020483
Comments: 24
Kudos: 277





	Strategies for the Advanced Player

**Author's Note:**

> _Yeah, you really got me now/You got me so I don't know what I'm doin' now_ \- The Kinks
> 
> An anonymous Tumblr prompt wanted Beth wearing Benny's clothes. This fic is technically that. I- Well. You'll see.

She can’t take it any longer.

She thought, when she agreed to this arrangement, that they both understood it for what it was: a ruse. Was Benny’s impressive mental archive of match history something she could benefit from? Yes. Was Beth able to recognize him as a valuable resource? Yes. Was the training he offered, despite those acknowledgements, also just an easy façade for an inevitably carnal relationship? She fucking figured!

Two weeks he’s had her suffering. Two of the five before Paris. Staying in his apartment, drinking his coffee, and sleeping where? On an air mattress that smells like mildew and makes trying to get comfortable enough to sleep an experience equivalent to a child learning to ride a bike (not that anyone ever taught _her_ )—just way too much wobbling side to side.

Maybe Benny does want to keep this professional. Maybe he thinks that much of himself, his stature in the chess world, his imperviousness to her beauty and charisma, his purity as a man truly devoted to chess and coaching a chosen protégé to victory. Bastard. He just might. Except that he can’t be that obtuse, Beth’s certain. She made him aware of her attraction to him and how does he respond? By wearing that fucking robe. Or sometimes no robe! No shirt! Yeah, it kinda brings back memories of her mom dressing way, way down around the house when her fickle husband was still jerking her ( _them_ , really, though Beth never felt like more than an observer of the situation or him) around, but that was different. Alma was at sea, depressed, unable to locate even the thinnest straw to grasp. Benny’s flaunting his partial nudity, Beth swears he is. It’s not about relaxing in his own home; it’s about torturing _her_.

She glares at his back every night he gives her that look and shuts himself in his bedroom. Privacy is a luxury in this dismal apartment and he heightens its appeal by colouring it coquettish. Every morning he emerges, sits across from her at the chessboard, adjusts his pieces—black or white, they alternate, _the way the game should be played_ —with hovering hands and delicate shifts. Making Beth tense. Making Beth want to scream.

Benny’s home is like a vault within a vault. The awkward entry, the narrow trash-lined corridor. The heavy door, the bleak interior. Finally, the bedroom. She’s not sure if it’s her arrival that causes him to draw items of importance close to himself or if that’s how he’s always behaved, but week two cascades into week three and a pounding headache yields to the realization that he’s quit squirreling things away. Away in his room, away from her. Specific things. Copies of books he lectures her about and has always carried back to some secret shelf at the end of the day are suddenly left on the table. One night, Beth expresses an interest in taking a long, solitary walk soon and the next day, she wakes to hear Benny in the shower and find that he’s left her his key on the kitchen counter where she prepares her breakfast. The books and the key have made a transition and become pieces of their communal space. Is this trust? If not for him screwing with her vis-à-vis the robe, Beth would soften at the gesture. Too late.

He leaves his jacket and hat in the living room. The next morning, early, she slips the jacket on over her pink pajamas and slaps the hat onto her head. Clothes are identity—hers are, and so are his. Her mother embroidered a dress with her name and though she saw Mrs. Deardorff take it away to be burned, Beth never saw the fire. It might’ve been beautiful. For years, she wore lusterless browns and bruised blues, nothing ever new, everything the former garment of another orphan. Those were the colours and fabrics of loneliness. Since then, Beth’s only worn another person’s clothes for a particular reason: to feel close to Alma after her death. She dons Benny’s apparel with an eerie mix of that same solemnity and the helium-high humour of a clown. What can she say? The sexual tension’s got her slightly unhinged.

She remembers the interview. The implication of madness. She sits in Benny’s seat, facing his bedroom and wearing his clothes, and props her face delicately against the back of the fingers of both hands, like she does during some matches. Her fingernails touch, making a V below her chin. Unfortunately, her head’s drooping with sleepiness when Benny emerges, but she thinks he still gets the effect.

Halting the morning momentum that always propels him straight across the room to begin making coffee, he stares. He’s still doing it when Beth ceases yawning and blinking. Shirtless. Asshole.

“You want to explain what you’re doing?” he asks.

She glances down at herself. It’s really uncomfortable, sitting with so much jacket bunched up against her lower back. Why would he do this?

“Besides the obvious?” she checks. Benny’s expression says he’s ready to be amused, but he’s not there yet. She’ll need to lead him. “I’m trying a new strategy.”

“Osmosis?”

“Please don’t. I hope I’m not absorbing anything through this jacket. I’m just taking things a step further than reading your book.”

“The fact that you say that like it’s a logical progression worries me.”

Beth laughs, then remembers something.

“Oh!” she says, and holds up a finger before ducking her head and affixing the fake mustache. She raises her head. “Can’t believe I almost forgot.”

Now, Benny laughs.

“What… what is…?” he wheezes.

“I cut a couple strands off your broom. I’ll buy you a new one.”

She adjusts her straw mustache immediately because uttering the promise tilts it. The only glue she could find is very weak, still slick on her upper lip as she presses the straw against her skin.

“Don’t bother. I barely use it.”

Beth sneezes massively; her mustache is dusty.

“I can tell,” she says.

“Take that off,” he instructs, smiling and shaking his head fondly.

She peels the mustache away with a diluted sense of defeat and wipes the dab of glue off with a used napkin as Benny walks over to her. It’s the closest they’ve been—him standing next to the chair as she twists to look up at him. What she anticipates, when his arm twitches forward, is the eternal, fraternal shoulder squeeze. No. He cups her chin.

“What are you doing?”

“What are _you_ doing?” she counters.

Gripping the chairback, he bends and kisses her. When he doesn’t hurry to withdraw, Beth slides her hands around his ribs, pressing her fingers to his back. He plucks the hat from her head while their eyes are closed.

“Take that off,” he mumbles against her mouth, then sneaks his tongue inside. The kissing grows heated and she stands, body curving readily with his, hands grasping the back of his neck.

“Is it because I’m dressed like you?” she asks the second his lips break away from hers. She opens her eyes to scrutinize his. “You are pretty obsessed with yourself.”

Benny smiles and watches her. He smooths her hair, then drops his hand to her shoulder. Pointedly, he looks down.

“Take that off.”

Beth huffs and lets go of his neck, pushing at the lapels of his leather jacket to slip back out of it, but Benny reaches for her hand. More than that; stills it, covers it, captures it.

“Ah,” he says, a guttural noise of correction. She hates that noise. He makes it when she gets sick of re-enacting historic matches and plays an original move instead. The sound is both stubborn and apologetic—Benny knows when he’s holding her back.

He lowers Beth’s hand to her side and leaves it hanging there. His come up to her chest, not to remove the jacket, but to undo the top button on her pajamas.

“The jacket—” she starts.

“—can wait,” he finishes.


End file.
